PBS is pulling the plug on season three of their hit show, “Finding Your Roots,” after an investigation revealed that actor Ben Affleck pressured producers into leaving out details about an ancestor who owned slaves.
“We’ve never had anyone ever try to censor or edit what we found,” host and Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote to Sony executive Michael Lynton in July 2014. Gates added that this would violate PBS rules, and “once we open the door to censorship, we lose control of the brand.”
In October, Affleck’s episode aired but neglected to mention the slave-owning ancestor. After the emails were posted to WikiLeaks, Gates revealed that producers had made other shocking discoveries about Affleck’s ancestors including a relative from the Revolutionary War and an occult enthusiast.
In April, Affleck responded to the discovery via Facebook, claiming that he was “embarrassed” by the discovery and “didn’t want any television show about my family to include a guy who owned slaves.”
As a result, PBS will not run the show’s third season until staff changes are made, which will include a fact checker and an “independent genealogist” to review the show’s content.
In the investigation, PBS said producers violated network standards by letting Affleck have “improper influence” and “by failing to inform PBS or WNET of Mr. Affleck’s efforts to affect program content.”
PBS also said it had not made a decision about whether to commit to a fourth season of the show.
In a statement on Wednesday, Gates said, “I sincerely regret not discussing my editing rationale with our partners at PBS and WNET and I apologize for putting PBS and its member stations in the position of having to defend the integrity of their programming.”
